The Colas c17.21

c17.21

Within a few years after 992, Tailapa II died and was succeeded by Satyāśraya on the Cāḷukya throne. The later inscriptions of Rājarāja's reign state that he fought a success-ful war against Satyāśraya and captured some of his treasure, part of which went to the enrichment of the great Tanjore tem-ple.⁴⁸ The W. Cāḷukyas were also hard pressed in the north by the hostility of the Paramāras of Mālwa and must have found it hard to sustain themselves against two powerful ene-mies attacking them from opposite directions. The inscrip-tions of Rājarāja from about A.D. 1003⁴⁹ roundly assert that he captured by force Raṭṭapāḍi, 'the seven and a half lakh country. This is a violent exaggeration. More trustworthy is the poetic statement in the Tiruvālangāḍu plates⁵⁰ that Satyāśraya, though, true to his ‘origin from Taila (oil), he fled the battle-field in order to escape the misery of facing the ocean-like army of Rājarāja, still became himself the abode of misery (*kaṣṭāśraya*). The Karandai (Tanjore) plates devote several verses to the account of Rājarāja’s war against Satyāśraya. Rājarāja’s elephants are said to have wrought havoc on the banks of the Tungabhadrā (v. 28). Seated on his war horse, he is said, single-handed, to have checked the rush of the advancing Cāḷukya army like Śiva restraining with his *Jaṭā* the force of Gaṅgā’s descent on earth (v. 29). He took the Cāḷukya general Keśava prisoner (v. 31). The next four verses are also descriptive of this war, though they add no new facts (32-5). Lastly, a verse under the reign of Rājēndra I, the son and successor of Rājarāja, discloses that Rājarāja had taken a vow to capture Mānyakhēṭa, the Cāḷukya capital, and that Rājēndra fulfilled the vow (v. 51).